Testosterone, Set, and Setting
Every neurotransmitter and every hormone is a psychoactive compound --hence the experience it brings forth is shaped by set and setting. J am contemplating this in relation to testosterone between sets at the gym.
Robert Sapolsky speaks of the fact that testosterone is a molecule that motivates us to want to win at the cultural game we are playing. In a culture that values aggression it encourages aggression. In a culture that valued altruism it would encourage altruism.
Testosterone, or course, is part of the chemical symphony that gives form to the ways every body of every sex and every gender dances itself into continuously shapeshifting form. Introducing more testosterone into the body will always change the nature or embodiment and expression. So too will the intention with which it is introduced, and the cultural context that influences that intention. Knowing that there are a wide range of reasons people seek to increase their testosterone levels, I want to be clear here that I am speaking specifically and exclusively about the cultural context in which testosterone supplementation is becoming more popular among my fellow “gym bros.”
Much of the current trend of testosterone supplementation and of normalizing the use of steroids and questionable peptides to “masculinize” cis-male bodies is taking place in the context of a culture in which personal identity is a market commodity. From men my age and older who want to appear eternally youthful to teenage looksmaxxers trying to create their brands, it is not about embodying health or virility, it is about winning at the performance of masculinity by increasing your valuation in the attention economy. And just like the cultural aesthetic shaping the outward performance of femininity, the cultural aesthetics around masculinity are shaped primarily by the standards of the patriarchal male gaze.
It is also emerging in the context of the conscription of more and more disaffected men into end times fascism. And like all forms of fascism, end times fascism sees the feminine as contagion and is anxious about the perceived feminization of men. And it defines tenderness and nurtuance and compassion as feminine -- in no small part because the industrial revolution took the man out of the household. In ways that are not talked about as much it also sees the erotic as dangerous to masculinity -- and the rise in porn is an expression of, not an exception to this, it is about sexual desire being gratified in less embodied ways and turning what physical sex occurs into mimicry of the simulacrum performed without presence and connection.
And, yes, hormone disrupters in our food and water supply are reducing testosterone levels in people’s bodies. But that is not what this testosterone supplementation trend is actually responding to. In fact, discourse about the “feminization” of cis men diverts attention from the larger question of the toxic threats to all of our endocrine systems.
And I write all of this while I am at the gym lifting weights. And when I get home I will take Pine pollen tincture to elevate my testosterone to aid in building muscle
In doing this, I am consciously working to change the set and setting in which both the endogenous testosterone generated by my workout and the exogenous androgens from the Pine are working to reshape me. I will walk out and ask the Pines what they and the forest want me to serve and want me to embody. I will feel deeply into their response. And I will measure myself according to how they receive me and according to how I bring Pine-ness and Oak-ness and Hawthorn-ness to human hearts.
The gender I seek to affirm is a wilder one — it requires that I asked to be dreamed by wild dreamers. And it is only this kind of dreaming that will lead us out of the nightmares this civilization has imposed on our bodies and our lives.
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Wow! Incredible, thank you. I recently listened to a podcast about enhancement games where athletes "past their prime" as Olympians are not only doping, but using all the chemical enhancements possible to up their game, and I thought - but what of the aging and maturation process are they missing out on?
In some ways, maybe it's easy for me to say this as I hurtle towards 50, happy for the psycho(meant with its Grecian etymology of soul)-emotional changes I've been granted along with that strange chicken skin at the joint creases (you win some, you lose some).
And what would it look like to be in conversation with the powers of testosterone? Not as a substance to return any of us to the pinnacle of shut-down masculine prowess, but as an invitation into...something else.
Interesting analysis, and a good change in perspective. I remember rummaging about the web with autotranslate turned on and looking up medicinal uses of pine. A Chinese folktale appeared about two women (or one) who escaped a conflict and lived on pine resin and needles in the forest. They are said to have grown hair all over their bodies and never felt cold, and lived for over two hundred years. When they were found and brought back to civilization and fed grains they quickly fell ill and died (or they stayed in the forest and attained spirit immortality).
It could be a useful plant medicine for trans men too, who are disillusioned with the medical system.